Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Actress and Hollywood star in the great days of the film city.
Eight records
Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61
Yehudi Menuhin with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Edward Elgar
Well, I've chosen because I grew up in a part of uh Northern California where Yehudi Manuin was a child. And I vaguely remember meeting him. He lived very close to us. And the first time I ever saw him he was literally wearing little shorts, blue serge shorts, and he was playing the Elga violin concerto.
Walter's great hit was in the Kurt Vile musical in New York called Knickerbocker Holiday, and he sang September Song. I didn't know it at the time, but one day I would be in Hollywood and I would make a picture called September Affair, in which September's song was very important.
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16Favourite
Arthur Rubinstein with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alfred Wallenstein
one day I was having lunch with my mother and sister, and an elderly gentleman ... came over and said ... my name is Arthur Rubenstein. and we became friends. His wife, Nella, used to cook for us, and so I have chosen his Greek concerto in A minor.
I get more letters ... about the music from the Constant Nymph. Than any other film I ever made, and they all ask what was it, what was the name of this song? And of course, it is Forever from the Constant Nymph.
I did a lot of radio, as we all did in Hollywood, and I was always amused by all the bloopers that were made. And here is an excerpt from one of the records of the famous Hollywood and New York radio bloopers of all time.
Well, I am a romanticist, of course. I'm highly romantic, and since my birthday is in October, I love the autumn, and the the nicest thing I can think of ever is Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves.
Donald Gramm, conducted by Richard Bonynge
One of my close friends is Donald Graham, and he has a lot of people around, especially Christmas. ... And they have the opera carol party ... and everybody that you can imagine from the Metropolitan Opera gets up and sings a Christmas carol. ... So I've selected Don Giovanni with Donald Graham singing.
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Moura Lympany with the New Symphony Orchestra of London, conducted by Anthony Collins
Well, since uh Maura Limpany is a very close friend of mine and lives in London, she stays with me when she comes to New York and vice versa. And I also played the Rachmaninoff second when I did September Affair. So I've chosen Maura Limpany's Rachmaninoff third.
The keepsakes
The book
Well, it would be a single volume encyclopedia because the encyclopedia. Not only tells you everything, but it gives you other languages, it gives you sciences, it gives you any number of things.
The luxury
Absolutely beautiful. I don't I just stay in my little palm front tent and watch it. It's perfectly all right in the moonlight on that marvellous pool in front and the beauty of the tiled and the shape.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What was the very first occasion on which you appeared in front of the camera?
The well the one that I can remember was no more ladies. with Joan Crawford, and I think it was under the name of Joan Burfield I acted then.
Presenter asks
Was [your contract] one of those celebrated Hollywood contracts where you have to play exactly what you're told to play and you can be hired out to other producers?
Yes, it was an awful long term contract where you were bought and sold like um athletes are today, really. And they have nothing to say about it.
Presenter asks
Is it true that [Alfred] Hitchcock treats actors badly, that he thinks they're just puppets to move around?
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
Speaker 1
For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
Our castaway this week is an actress, a Hollywood star in the great days of the film city, it's Joan Fontaine.
Presenter
Joan, you're no stranger to London, of course, and in fact, you are half English, aren't you?
Joan Fontaine
The whole thing back, a Hollywood star. I was an actress in the theatre first, and I resent being called a m movie queen. And I'm now an author. I am English. I'm all English.
Joan Fontaine
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
He was indeed. How clever of you to know. Harrow, all that. My mother was Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and she taught music at the Reading University. Did she? Yes. She had a beautiful contralto voice. And so when I was a child I heard her singing all kinds of lovely things. So I'm musical in respect and devotion to my mother. And I inherited my father's tin ear.
Presenter
What's the first record you've chosen to take to this island?
Joan Fontaine
Well, I've chosen because I grew up in a part of uh Northern California where Yehudi Manuin was a child.
Joan Fontaine
And I vaguely remember meeting him. He lived very close to us. And the first time I ever saw him he was literally wearing little shorts, blue serge shorts, and he was playing the Elga violin concerto. So that would be my first choice on this Desert Island. And it's conducted by Elga himself.
Presenter
An excerpt from the Elgar Violin Concerto recorded in nineteen thirty two with young Yehudi Menouin and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.
Presenter
Now, you grew up, you said, in Northern California. In fact, you had been born in Japan.
Joan Fontaine
Yes, we were in Tokyo.
Presenter
And you left as a child when your parents were sadly divorced.
Joan Fontaine
on en route to Italy, but we got as far as Northern California and stayed there. And mother began to bring us up in drama in a funny way. We we had to have ballet, we had to have uh piano and singing and all that kind of thing.
Presenter
You and your sister Olivia de Havilland were slightly older than you.
Joan Fontaine
Yes, rather. And one of my uh teachers happened to be called Margaret Carrington.
Joan Fontaine
And she made me do all those pear-shaped tones and so on. She happened to be the sister of
Joan Fontaine
The famous Walter Houston, who was the father of the very famous John Houston, the director. And Walter's great hit was in the Kurt Vile musical in New York called Knickerbocker Holiday, and he sang September Song. I didn't know it at the time, but one day I would be in Hollywood and I would make a picture called September Affair, in which September's song was very important. So here we are with Walter Houston singing September Song.
Presenter
And the days turn to gold
Presenter
As they grow few September
Presenter
Now they
Presenter
And these few golden days
Presenter
I'd share with you
Presenter
These golden days I'd share with you
Presenter
WALTER HUSTON, September Zone.
Presenter
Apart from school theatricals, did you have any formal training? Did you go to a drama school?
Joan Fontaine
Well, many, and also Max Reinhardt. What might interest you, Roy, since you're musical, is that Max Reinhart, who didn't speak English very well, had a difficult time teaching us, so he gave us a musical score. So if we said The Moonlight sleeps upon the bank and will not be awaked, it was done in a musical way, so you knew how he wanted it, and whether it were quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, whatever it was.
Presenter
What took you into the the acting business? What got you started off?
Joan Fontaine
Oh, heavens, many things. I I suppose school plays and then and I uh was lucky enough to do one or two theatre things, one with May Robeson and Conway Turle and Violet Hemming. You you played an English girl?
Presenter
You
Joan Fontaine
Always English women, always. And um one day I was having lunch with my mother and sister, and an elderly gentleman at least he seemed elderly he was probably quite young came over and said
Joan Fontaine
mister Halvin, which was my name at the time, I am deeply impressed at your looks. I had to come over and tell you so. And my name is Arthur Rubenstein.
Joan Fontaine
and we became friends. His wife, Nella, used to cook for us, and so I have chosen his Greek concerto in A minor.
Presenter
Arthur Rubenstein with the R C A Victor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alfred Wallenstein, playing the opening of the Grieg piano concerto in A minor.
Presenter
What was the very first occasion on which you appeared in front of the camera?
Joan Fontaine
The well the one that I can remember was no more ladies.
Joan Fontaine
with Joan Crawford, and I think it was under the name of Joan Burfield I acted then.
Presenter
How many names did you have altogether?
Joan Fontaine
You're talking about my married life, too? Because I've answered to eight names, so you can figure that out. Okay. Yeah. Uh Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
Yeah.
Presenter
Anyway, there you were with Joan Crawford.
Joan Fontaine
Anyway
Joan Fontaine
And I was so frightened. I was probably just eighteen at the time. What was the part? A very sophisticated lady, about thirty six, older than Joan Crawford, and I had one very bitchy line, I believe. But I was so nervous I couldn't get the line out. And George Kilker later told me that uh they took take after take and I couldn't do this and he
Joan Fontaine
out finely in Tahley.
Presenter
You had to go back on the stage again to get your big break.
Presenter
Oh, I don't know about that. Um your contract.
Joan Fontaine
Yes. Well, it was the one I mentioned with uh Violet Hemming and and uh Conway Turr was the one when um Jesse Lasky came backstage and saw me and signed me up. But that was my second play.
Presenter
And so
Presenter
Was that one of those celebrated Hollywood contracts where you have to play exactly what you're told to play and you can be hired out to other producers and all that sort of thing?
Joan Fontaine
Yes, it was an awful long term contract where you were bought and sold like um athletes are today, really. And they have nothing to say about it.
Presenter
Really?
Presenter
Well, you made a lot of films, including some very good ones. Some disasters too, of course. Well, let's talk about the best.
Joan Fontaine
The best.
Presenter
Which is your own favourite? Which do you look back on with the most affection?
Joan Fontaine
I should think five, Rebecca.
Presenter
Hmm.
Joan Fontaine
Uh
Joan Fontaine
Er certainly Constant Lymph letter from an unknown woman in that order. Yes. And or I should say Jane Eyre.
Joan Fontaine
And uh well that's about it. Maybe I don't know.
Presenter
We are
Presenter
Rebecca, possibly the most famous for Alfred Hitchcock. You made two for him suspicion, the other one for which you won an Oscar. Is it true that he treats actors badly, that he thinks they're just puppets to move around?
Joan Fontaine
They're just packets to move around.
Joan Fontaine
He's the dearest man. He was a friend. He and I got along beautifully. He used to call me Kid. He was adorable to me. And as a matter of fact, there is a famous scene where Mrs. Danvers is trying to push the girl out of the window and says, Go on, jump, do a head, go and jump. And I said to Hitchcock, I've cried so long I can't cry any more. He said, Well, what are we going to do, kid? And I said, Would you mind slapping me? He said, What? He said, Well, when the camera starts, would you just slap me on the face? He said, Well, I will, if you want. And he did. And he I was so grateful to him. And out of gratitude, all those tears started again and we finished the scene.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Another film you mentioned, Letter from an Unknown Woman, that was directed by Max Opels. He he was a a great director too.
Joan Fontaine
Oh, indeed, a German director, and he spoke very little English at the time, and I didn't speak much German, but we understood each other, which is a lovely thing between an actor and a director. And if only more directors would understand that that's very important, the communication. The director is not there to be an admiral, a captain, a policeman. He's there to try to get the best out of the person. So Max was rather like that with me, anyway.
Presenter
And who else? Edmund Goulding, he was a very good director.
Joan Fontaine
Oh, what a marvellous man, and very musical. He would call me on the Constant Nymph sometimes at two or three in the morning, and and whistle a tune. And he said, I've got it, I've got the love song, this is what it should sound like, and how do you feel? I didn't mind at all. I was thrilled that a director would communicate so personally with one. And then he with the great Eric Korngold would get together, and I get more letters.
Speaker 1
Together.
Joan Fontaine
about the music from the Constant Nymph.
Joan Fontaine
Than any other film I ever made, and they all ask what was it, what was the name of this song? And of course, it is Forever from the Constant Nymph.
Presenter
Let's have your fourth record. What shall we have now?
Joan Fontaine
Ah well, I did a lot of radio, as we all did in Hollywood, and I was always amused by all the bloopers that were made. And here is an excerpt from one of the records of the famous Hollywood and New York radio bloopers of all time.
Presenter
Let's listen to this newscaster's exciting report of an important wedding.
Presenter
All the world was thrilled with the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Presenter
We take you now to BBC in England.
Presenter
And as his trusty little donkey carried Quixote up the road, he could see the gates of the city ahead.
Presenter
Don Quixote's excitement rose as he contemplated the knightly adventures that waited him.
Presenter
I see our time is running out. Some famous bloopers from American and British Radio, collected by Kermit Schaefer.
Presenter
Now we talked about directors, leading men, a very impressive list, John. Charles Boyer?
Joan Fontaine
Yes, among oh, Kerry Grant, Tyrone Power, Orson Wells, uh Laurence Olivier, I I can't Jimmy Stewart, so many of them.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Um well, Orson Welles, for example, uh you played opposite him in in Jane. He was Rochester. Not an easy man, I shouldn't think, to work with, is he?
Joan Fontaine
Bonch.
Joan Fontaine
Er one didn't expect him to be easy, so you um knew what you were in for. Uh
Presenter
Uh
Joan Fontaine
Mm-hmm. Was he a temperamental?
Presenter
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
Not temperamental. I think he was probably a better director, a visionary, a writer, an assembler, a producer, and acting was something that had to be done. He was enormously talented, I'm not implying that he wasn't but I think he was more comfortable on the other side of the camera.
Presenter
and Carrie Grant, a very, very professional actor.
Joan Fontaine
Oh, no one like him. Oh, fabulous comedian and I always watched him move. I don't think anybody could move the way he did. Not a ballet dancer sort of move, but marvellous balance and bounce in his
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
No one like
Joan Fontaine
Body. He moved yes, he acted with his whole body, which I think is fine acting.
Presenter
And you played opposite Fred Astaire in a musical, in A Damsel in Distress, that must have been joyous.
Joan Fontaine
No, my dear Roy, it was a rightly entitled damsel in distress. It was my first and last dancing adventure.
Joan Fontaine
I had had ballet, as I'd earlier said, and so he waltzed me round the room and thought I could dance, and his Hermes Pan, his choreographer, did the same, so that was fine.
Joan Fontaine
But I hadn't realized that I would be jumping over fences and doing all kinds of things to Gershwin's things are looking up.
Presenter
You hated those fences, though, did you?
Joan Fontaine
Well, I was covered with blisters, scared to death. I was twenty years old, if that.
Presenter
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
I'm terrified, of course, of mister Astaire, who couldn't have been nicer to work with. But he was a legend to me.
Presenter
So you've certainly worked with some of the greats and
Joan Fontaine
I have indeed. I've been very fortunate.
Presenter
Record number five.
Joan Fontaine
I've
Joan Fontaine
Well, I am a romanticist, of course. I'm highly romantic, and since my birthday is in October, I love the autumn, and the the nicest thing I can think of ever is Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves.
Presenter
And she went away
Presenter
The days grow long
Presenter
And soon I'll hear
Presenter
Old winner sorry.
Presenter
But I miss you most of all, my darling.
Presenter
But autumn leaves start to fall.
Presenter
Autumn Leaves by Nap King Coe
Presenter
Did you mix much with the celebrated British colony?
Joan Fontaine
Oh, yes, indeed. And uh a great many of the the musical people in Hollywood. I was lucky enough to know Pierre Monteur, for instance, and as a child with the San Francisco opera, Papa Hertz, as we called him, Merilla, all that. Because of my mother's love for music, we were surrounded by it. And I remember one of the first experiences I ever had was going backstage in the San Francisco Opera House and meeting
Joan Fontaine
Queen Amario, and that sort of thing. So I was brought up loving above all people, musicians and opera people.
Speaker 1
And all.
Joan Fontaine
One of my close friends is Donald Graham, and he has a lot of people around, especially Christmas. And I'm going back to New York for this. And they have the opera carol party, and it's a famous one in New York. And everybody that you can imagine from the Metropolitan Opera gets up and sings a Christmas carol. And it it is Christmas to me, it absolutely is. So I've selected Don Giovanni with Donald Graham singing.
Presenter
Italio.
Presenter
Sit in Twig Maran.
Presenter
Minal manoeuvre.
Presenter
Which help we control your
Presenter
Phineas for
Presenter
I is Anya, Sonja, me it remains
Presenter
I'm not sure if I can do it.
Presenter
DONNELL GRAM as LEPERLO in Mozart's Don Giovanni, a recording conducted by Richard Bonnie. Now, we've dumped you on this island, Joan. I know you're a resourceful and courageous lady. You once took part in an international balloon race, didn't you? And you won it.
Presenter
We won it. I wouldn't be in a balloon race if we didn't win.
Joan Fontaine
Yeah.
Presenter
Well, it's hard to build a balloon. Could you build a craft of some sort?
Joan Fontaine
I I presume I could build a kayak, couldn't I? Or a road raft?
Joan Fontaine
I should think. So I swim ve
Presenter
Very well.
Joan Fontaine
Uh
Presenter
Now before you lived
Presenter
Could you look after yourself? Could you build some kind of living quarters?
Joan Fontaine
I should think I could take palm fronds and put them together and sew them together. Yes, I don't see why I couldn't.
Presenter
What about food? Can you fish? Oh, indeed I can. Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
Mhm. I also got a few fishing prizes, the tuna. You've won prizes. Yes, I like uh dry fly fishing. I'm awfully good at that with trout, no.
Presenter
Well
Joan Fontaine
Are you good cook?
Presenter
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
I beg your pardon. I went to the Cordon Bleu, New York. Yes, and I'm going to cook for seventy five people Christmas Eve. Do it all myself.
Speaker 2
Or myself.
Joan Fontaine
He laughs. I have a I have a restaurant stove in my house, indeed I have.
Speaker 2
Yeah that
Joan Fontaine
Oh, that's quite a bit.
Presenter
That's quite exciting. I admire you in many directions.
Joan Fontaine
Another record.
Joan Fontaine
Since I'm laughing, and I think laughter is absolutely essential to life.
Joan Fontaine
And kidding oneself a little bit, too.
Joan Fontaine
I thought maybe we'd hear from Anna Russell on Wagner and spoofing it a bit.
Speaker 2
Well, one day who should turn up but Siegmund, and he falls madly in love with Sieglinda, regardless of the fact that she's married to Hunding, which is immoral, and she's his own sister, which is illegal.
Speaker 2
But that's the beauty of grand opera. You can do anything so long as you sing it.
Presenter
Anna Russell on Wagner and indeed spoofing it a bit. How many pictures have you made in England?
Joan Fontaine
Actually made in egg oh, I suppose I made three or four, sometimes not completely here of locations in other countries, but finished here.
Presenter
Publication
Presenter
And in recent years you've done a fair amount of stage work. You've liked to work to a live audience.
Joan Fontaine
I love to work to with live audiences, but best of all I like lecturing, because then I have a one to one basis. As a movie actor, one has only the camera to react to, but not with.
Joan Fontaine
As an actor on the stage you have that invisible fourth wall and you are at the same time a character. But as a lecturer you are simply yourself with no props, no other actors to help you out, and you are talking individually, as it were, to the audience.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
So you go on tour and you talk to all sorts of organizations, all sorts of groups.
Joan Fontaine
On many subjects, and I am now lecturing on American women poets, which I find fascinating. And I evolved another one, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and I took all their letters and their poems and I interwove them, so it's a continuous conversation between the two, all their own words. combining the poetry and it I think is very beautiful and something I adore doing.
Presenter
And now you've written this autobiography, No Bed of Roses.
Presenter
And it it's a very honest book, isn't it, Joan? I mean you you tell us the lot. All the all the
Joan Fontaine
Well, I wouldn't go that far. I everything that's as like the New York Times says that's fit to print, I have told you about. But no more than that, because I simply don't believe that you should reveal anybody else's secrets, let alone your your own, which are not fit to print. And we all have those, don't we? But I've tried to be objective. I've tried to explain my own life and tell it only as far as I am concerned. Right.
Presenter
I have told you about it.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
Oh.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
Your last record, what's that to be?
Joan Fontaine
Well, since uh Maura Limpany is a very close friend of mine and lives in London, she stays with me when she comes to New York and vice versa. And I also played the Rachmaninoff second when I did September Affair. So I've chosen Maura Limpany's Rachmaninoff third. You really?
Presenter
You really played the second. It was all your own work. You played every note.
Joan Fontaine
And that's I I wish you hadn't said that, but I will be honest, since you say I am candid. I uh learnt all the fingering and I had to get up in the front of the orchestra uh with a muted piano, mind you, and I got up and I played the whole thing and um
Joan Fontaine
The orchestra all stood up and cheered, and the director cheered and said but it's absolutely marvellous, John. Now take the mutes away from the piano and play it. Well, of course it was worse than chopsticks, so he knew that I hadn't played it, but at least uh well, I'm an actor after all, that's what we're doing, isn't it?
Presenter
And Maura Limpani plays every note herself.
Joan Fontaine
She does indeed.
Presenter
And which one of the rap men and off concertos is this?
Joan Fontaine
The Rock Money Enough, Number Three
Presenter
The opening of the third Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto in D minor, More a Limpany with the new Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Antony Collins.
Presenter
If you could take just one of the eight discs you played us, which would you choose?
Joan Fontaine
It would be the Greek.
Presenter
Yeah.
Joan Fontaine
Yeah.
Presenter
The Grig piano concerto. And you're allowed to take one luxury with you to the island.
Joan Fontaine
The Taj Mahab
Joan Fontaine
Sorry about that.
Presenter
That's all right. You'll have to promise me that you can't do it.
Joan Fontaine
Absolutely beautiful. I don't I just stay in my little palm front tent and watch it. It's perfectly all right in the moonlight on that marvellous pool in front and the beauty of the tiled and the shape.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Alright.
Presenter
And you're allowed one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and multi-volume encyclopedias.
Joan Fontaine
Well, it would be a single volume encyclopedia because the encyclopedia.
Presenter
It causes
Joan Fontaine
Not only tells you everything, but it gives you other languages, it gives you sciences, it gives you any number of things.
Presenter
Right, and thank you Joan Fontaine for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.
Joan Fontaine
Well, thank you, Roy. It's been a pleasure, and this has been no desert island. This has been very refreshing and fulfilling.
Presenter
Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
He's the dearest man. He was a friend. He and I got along beautifully. He used to call me Kid. He was adorable to me. And as a matter of fact, there is a famous scene where Mrs. Danvers is trying to push the girl out of the window and says, Go on, jump, do a head, go and jump. And I said to Hitchcock, I've cried so long I can't cry any more. He said, Well, what are we going to do, kid? And I said, Would you mind slapping me? He said, What? He said, Well, when the camera starts, would you just slap me on the face? He said, Well, I will, if you want. And he did. And he I was so grateful to him. And out of gratitude, all those tears started again and we finished the scene.
Presenter asks
Orson Welles ... you played opposite him in Jane [Eyre]. He was Rochester. Not an easy man, I shouldn't think, to work with, is he?
Not temperamental. I think he was probably a better director, a visionary, a writer, an assembler, a producer, and acting was something that had to be done. He was enormously talented, I'm not implying that he wasn't but I think he was more comfortable on the other side of the camera.
Presenter asks
You've written this autobiography, No Bed of Roses. It's a very honest book, isn't it, Joan? I mean you tell us the lot.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. I everything that's as like the New York Times says that's fit to print, I have told you about. But no more than that, because I simply don't believe that you should reveal anybody else's secrets, let alone your your own, which are not fit to print. And we all have those, don't we? But I've tried to be objective. I've tried to explain my own life and tell it only as far as I am concerned.
“The whole thing back, a Hollywood star. I was an actress in the theatre first, and I resent being called a m movie queen. And I'm now an author. I am English. I'm all English.”
“The director is not there to be an admiral, a captain, a policeman. He's there to try to get the best out of the person.”
“I love to work to with live audiences, but best of all I like lecturing, because then I have a one to one basis. As a movie actor, one has only the camera to react to, but not with.”